Football throwing machines have been in use since the early 1990's. Virtually every college football program, professional football organization, and thousands of high schools across America use a football throwing machine to better their athletes. The machine is designed to provide a consistent throw to athletes who desire to improve their abilities to catch a football. The machine provides the ability to adjust the speed of the ball as well as the location of the ball through adjusting the machine's position. However, a large inefficiency exists with this machine as it requires an individual other than the person catching the footballs to be present. The individual loading the football and manually pushing the ball through the machine gets absolutely no value or skill development from doing so. This makes it very difficult for athletes who want to work on catching the football to get better because it is hard to find someone willing to load balls into a machine for an extended period of time.
An example prior art football throwing machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,932,156 entitled “System and Method To Pitch Footballs”, issued Jan. 13, 2015.
Another example prior art football throwing machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 9,022,016 entitled “Football Throwing Machine”, issued May 5, 2015. This prior art includes a magazine for loading several footballs. This partially alleviates the issue of having a individual present at the machine during operation.
An example prior art football receiving and throwing machine is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,553,244 entitled “Ball Receiving And Launching Machine”, issued Jun. 30, 2009. This patent has a limitation in the way that the football is funneled. This patent uses a netting with two sloped sides and vibration technology to orient the football nose first. This is inefficient as well as inconsistent. Depending on how the ball falls into the two sided sloping funnel the ball can potentially sit at the point of orientation for an extended period of time where it is being vibrated in an attempt to orient the football correctly. This is inefficient as a player catching footballs wants the process to be as rhythmic as possible. This patent does not offer the ability to achieve this important outcome due to its orienting method of the football.
Another example prior art football receiving and throwing machine is disclosed in U.S. Pub. No. 2017/0326414 entitled “Oval Football Receiving And Launching Machine And Method”, published Nov. 16, 2017.
The disclosure of each of the above cited U.S. patents and U.S. patent application Publications is incorporated by reference herein.